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On 4 November 1922, Howard Carter and his team discovered the Tutankhamun’s tomb. The subsequent process of clearing the tomb and cleaning, restoring, and documenting the almost 6,000 objects found in its four small rooms took more than ten years. The story of this process survives in extraordinary detail, thanks to the excavation records created during the work. Documenting the tomb was a challenging task because of the quantity, variety, and fragility of some of the artefacts, which included not only gold and semi-precious stones, but also organic materials such as gilded wood, textiles, cakes, fruit, and even flowers. During the first weeks of work, the team developed a meticulous workflow, reflected in the archaeological records. Together, these documents form an interconnected account of the excavation – not just of the objects themselves, but of the process as a whole – allowing us to reconstruct the artefacts’ original find spots, trace relationships between them, and better understand how archaeology was practised a hundred years ago.
The primary archive
When Carter died in 1939, he left most of his estate, including the excavation records, to his niece Phyllis Walker, who had spent a season with him in Luxor in 1931. Although not an Egyptologist, she recognised the archive’s importance and sought advice from Alan Gardiner and Percy Newberry, former excavation team-members. They recommended donating it to the newly founded Griffith Institute in Oxford. Oxford scholars needed the records for publication, and, with war imminent, Oxford was considered safer than London. Most of the records were moved to Oxford in autumn 1939 and, after the war, Phyllis donated the archive and its associated copyright to the Griffith Institute ‘as a memorial to my uncle and his work’.
Today, the Tutankhamun primary archive consists of roughly 20,000 documents, including Carter’s personal diaries and archaeological journals; around 50 maps and plans; almost 7,000 object cards produced by Carter and various specialists; Alfred Lucas’s conservation logbooks; scientific notes by multiple authors for the planned academic publication of the tomb; Carter’s 18 so-called ‘autopsy drawings’; and around 1,200 original glass negatives, together with1,500 smaller glass and film negatives produced by the expedition’s photographer, as well as several thousand original and later prints; and 632 lantern slides. The photographs show not only the artefacts but also the archaeologists at work with the Egyptian team-members.
From the 1960s onwards, the Griffith Institute began publishing the material in the traditional academic way through monographs, but by the early 1990s Jaromír Málek, then Keeper of the Archive, realised that at this pace it would take more than two centuries to publish the Tutankhamun records in full. The idea was born to use the internet. Over the following 15 years, the Griffith Institute created the freely available digital platform Tutankhamun: Anatomy of an Excavation – a website that, for its time, was a ground-breaking project and transformed access to the archive for researchers worldwide. However, as technology moved on, it became clear that a more modern, integrated database was needed to represent the full complexity and interconnectedness of the archive.
The Tutankhamun Spatial Archive
Building on Málek’s legacy and supported by a generous research grant from the John Fell Fund, the Tutankhamun Spatial Archive was developed over the course of last summer and launched on 11 November 2025. This new database brings together every archaeological record from the tomb’s discovery and excavation – some never previously published online – within a single, interlinked environment. Researchers can trace each artefact through the excavation process and the documentary record it generated, while the public can explore the material through a more visual interface.
At first glance, the site’s structure is clear and intuitive. The first or ‘landing’ page introduces the main categories of documentation – journals and diaries, object cards, maps and plans, scientific notes, and images, as well as two additional groups, ‘correspondence’ and ‘miscellaneous documentation’– allowing users to navigate the archive according to their interests.
In addition to a direct search function at the top of the page, users can refine their exploration through a set of filters, including record type, creator, material, image type, and room.
Each individual record is presented with full metadata, alongside a high-resolution colour scan and a carefully revised transcription. One of the most significant developments concerns the photographic record. For the first time, all surviving formats of a single Burton image are brought together. These include original glass- and film-plate negatives, original and later prints, lantern slides, and photographs filed with object cards – a major advantage for both Egyptologists and historians of photography.
To provide additional context, three further sections have been created: ‘people’, offering short biographies of those involved in the work; ‘seasons’, summarising each excavation season and outlining the main activities and records produced; and ‘rooms’, describing all the rooms and principal architectural features of Tutankhamun’s tomb.
Archaeological context of objects
The term ‘spatial archive’ reflects the project’s broader vision. Documentation is now plotted within the individual rooms of the tomb, allowing records and objects to be explored in relation to their original archaeological context. A future phase will extend this approach through a searchable three-dimensional model of the tomb, enabling users to move between the archival record and a virtual reconstruction of the burial as it appeared when first uncovered. This way of visualising the archive will allow entirely new and unexpected connections to be identified between artefacts and archival records, facilitating an unprecedented level of research.
‘For Schools’ and ‘Stories’
The new website introduces a ‘For Schools’ section, too, offering interactive games and teaching resources, as well as a section called ‘Stories’. Both are designed to engage students and the wider public with the story of Tutankhamun’s tomb and the history of archaeology. In this way, the platform opens the discovery to a broad audience, combining knowledge, storytelling, and technology.
Launch and future plans
The Tutankhamun Spatial Archive was launched on 11 November to coincide with the centenary of the unwrapping of Tutankhamun’s mummified body in 1925. At present, it features records relating to around 120 objects associated with this event, including the mummified body, the famous golden mask, and the artefacts discovered within the linen bandages. These documents represent approximately 5% of the complete Tutankhamun archive, and we hope to add the remaining 19,000 records over the next two years. Achieving this will require the creation of around half a million metadata entries, the re-digitisation of several thousand records, and the revision and transcription of hundreds of notebook pages – a daunting but deeply satisfying task for the staff and volunteers of the Griffith Institute.
If you would like to support the Tutankhamun Spatial Archive project, please visit the website https://tutankhamun.griffith.ox.ac.uk and contact us.
Dr Daniela Rosenow is the Manager of the Griffith Institute, University of Oxford. You can read her article on the exhibition Tutankhamun: Excavating the Archive (which marked the centenary of the discovery of KV62) in AE 131.
All photographs: the author, unless otherwise stated
